First Minister Peter Robinson has called for intensive St Andrews Agreement-type talks to try to resolve a range of issues that are threatening the future of the Northern Executive.
The DUP leader said today that the powersharing Stormont Executive was “no longer fit for purpose” and all-embracing talks were required to try to break the deadlock.
Mr Robinson said that the impasse between, in particular, the DUP and Sinn Féin over welfare reform could bring down the Executive.
He said that the cost of Sinn Féin’s refusal to sign up to welfare change could be £1 billion annually taking in fines imposed by Westminster and the cost of introducing a new computer system to operate Northern Ireland’s stand-alone welfare system.
“It is transparently untenable for the Assembly and Executive to be sustainable while carrying the cost burden flowing from a failure to follow the national government’s welfare reform changes,” he wrote in an article in today’s Belfast Telegraph.
“We have now come against an issue that doesn’t allow us to hang on with the present process at Stormont. The present process cannot survive the welfare reform issue,” he added.
“We have to deal with this. It is not the case that we can scrub along for another period of time,” said Mr Robinson.
The First Minister pointed out that his estimated £1 billion annual cost of welfare reform is equivalent to ten per cent of the annual net subvention of £10 billion that Westminster provides to Stormont, and that this was not sustainable.
Mr Robinson said that huge financial imposition would lead to the loss of thousands of public service job and that was "not a price Northern Ireland could afford to pay to maintain devolution".
“Even if we were not faced with potentially terminal welfare decisions, Stormont’s processes need to be fundamentally upgraded,” added the First Minister.
While the current focus is on welfare reform the Northern Executive for several months now has been logjammed over a range of other issues such as parades, the past and flags, the creation of a reconciliation centre at the old Maze prison site, the Irish language and Sinn Féin/SDLP opposition to the new British National Crime Agency operating in Northern Ireland.
Mr Robinson in his article called for comprehensive talks similar to the negotiations that took place in St Andrews in Scotland in 2006 - an engagement that paved the way for the powersharing agreement between the DUP and Sinn Féin that led to the return of the Northern Executive in May 2007.
The St Andrews talks involved the five main Northern parties and the British and Irish governments. Should Mr Robinson's proposal be adopted it is also likely that the Irish Government would play a central role.
Mr Robinson said his proposed talks should involve the British government and parties outside the Northern Executive including the Greens, NI21 and the anti-Belfast Agreement Traditional Unionist Voice party.
The Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness in an early response said his “door has always been open for talks and said we can overcome the difficult challenges facing the political process”.
“The most productive way to do business and get an agreement is through talking to the people you disagree with. Megaphone or media-based negotiations are counter-productive,” he added.
“We all have a responsibility to work together but in the first place the First Minister should talk to me and to his Executive colleagues,” said Mr McGuinness.
“We have overcome enormous challenges in the past by treating each other with a degree of respect. With the support and engagement of the two governments and the US administration I’m confident we can find a resolution to our current difficulties.”
